On 13 October 2016 the former Glen o’Dee Hospital was destroyed by fire. A few days later two 13-year-old boys were charged by the police in connection with the blaze.
Glen O’Dee Hospital photographed in 1990 by RCHAMS
Glen O’Dee was quite possibly the historic hospital that I most admired. The memory of stumbling across it, without knowing what to expect, has never quite lost its charm. Its future had for long been uncertain and the building lain empty since at least 1998, steadily deteriorating.
A new community hospital was built behind it in the 1990s, complicating plans for re-using the original building. Planning permission was granted in 2010 for redevelopment as housing, but nothing was done, and it remained on the register of Buildings at Risk in Scotland.
Glen O’Dee hospital photographed in 1990 by RCAHMS. The contrast with the photograph taken in 2012 is marked.
Glen O’Dee was the first Sanatorium to be built in Scotland on the fresh‑air principle. It was designed by George Coutts of Aberdeen and opened in 1900. It was constructed mainly of timber with a central tower of Hill of Fare granite. Balconies and verandas were provided for all the rooms, facing south across the Dee, and access corridors ran along the north side. The recreation pavilion added to the south‑east below the dining‑hall was built in the same style with windows running all around it.
Extract from the 2nd-edition 25-inch OS map, surveyed in 1902 showing the newly built sanatorium. Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland
Stylistically it was closer to the sanatoria in Germany than any others that were subsequently built in Scotland. But it was also very similar to Mundesley Sanatorium, in Norfolk, which had opened the year before.
Glen O’Dee was originally called Nordrach‑on‑Dee, changing to Glen O’Dee when the building became a hotel for a time in 1934. It had been founded as a private sanatorium which treated TB on the Nordrach System pioneered at Nordrach in Baden, established in 1888 by Dr Otto Walther. This treatment mostly consisted of rest in the open air. Nordrach‑on‑Dee was founded by Dr David Lawson of Banchory, who had a distinguished career, pioneering work in the treatment of pulmonary tuberculosis. Before the Hospital was built, much discussion took place as to the site. In 1899 Lawson published an article outlining the criteria and giving details of the eminent committee formed to acquire a suitable site. This committee consisted of, amongst others, Professors of Medicine from Aberdeen and Edinburgh Universities. According to their research Deeside’s record for minimum rainfall and maximum sunshine were favourable.
The Bremer Sanatorium at Gobersdorf was one of the most influential of the early hospitals pioneering open-air treatment of tuberculosis. From F. R. Walters, Sanatoria for Consumptives, 1899.
The site for Nordrach-on-Dee was purchased from Sir Thomas Burnett of Crathes for between £5,000 and £6,000. The building itself was estimated to cost £12,000. Initially there were 40 bedrooms though later additions were made. In 1928 Nordrach‑on‑Dee closed and was unused until its re‑opening as a luxurious hotel in 1934.
A postcard of the sanatorium from c.1910 from the RCAHMS collection
Brochures surviving in NHS Grampian Archives from both its incarnations give a similar picture of the regimes at the Sanatoria and Hotel. In the earlier document the text describes how each room was constructed so as to admit a maximum of pure sunlight and fresh air. ‘The windows occupy over two‑thirds of the outside wall space and are so arranged as to permit of their being kept open during all weathers.”
An old postcard of Glen-o-Dee Hospital, when it was still known as Nordrach-on-Dee, from the RCAHMS collection
It was one of the first sanatoria to use x‑rays in the treatment of TB. In 1941 the Hotel was requisitioned by the army and at the end of the war it was purchased by the Scottish Red Cross Society, who re‑fitted it as a sanatorium for ex‑service men and women suffering from TB. It was opened as such by the Queen in 1949.
Aerofilms photograph of Glen O’Dee hospital taken in 1950 from the RCAHMS collection
In 1955 it was transferred to the National Health Service and was latterly devoted to the care of geriatric patients. Two single‑storey ward blocks were constructed to the rear, the most recent on the site of the former nurses’ home. In 1990 Grampian Health Board had plans to demolish part of the original sanatorium. Whilst its timber construction made it understandable that the building presented difficulties with both maintenance and fire prevention, its undoubted historic importance makes its loss regrettable.
Selected Sources: Grampian Health Board Archives, booklets on Sanatorium and Hotel. The Hospital, 1 June 1901, p.152‑3]; BBC news, online report: NHS Grampian archives website has a history and images of the hospital
Practically no trace now remains of Belvidere Hospital, a large housing estate having been built on the site. The Belvidere once played a key role in protecting the population of Glasgow from the ravages of infectious diseases, including smallpox. The hospital was built on the most up-to-date plan, and took shape over a prolonged period of construction beginning with temporary wooden huts that were later replaced by brick buildings.
Epidemics of infectious diseases were amongst the major threats to life to the urban poor, living in the overcrowded districts of the rapidly expanding and industrialising city. Although the parochial authorities made some provision for paupers, this was very limited and strictly speaking only paupers were eligible for admission. From 1862 local responsibility for public health in Glasgow rested with the Board of Police, and it was under their auspices that a temporary fever hospital was built in Parliamentary Road in 1865. Proximity to the centre of population and a restricted site rendered the hospital inadequate in the face of a severe epidemic of relapsing fever in 1870. As a result, Belvidere House and its 33 acre estate were purchased to provide a site for a permanent fever hospital.
Low Belvidere House and grounds in the 1850s, later the site of Belvidere Hospital. Extract from OS Town Plan of Glasgow, 1857. Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland
The original house was built by John M’Call, a leading merchant of Glasgow, who died there in 1790. It then passed to his son-in-law Robert M’Nair, a sugar-refiner, who sold up in 1813 to Mungo Nutto Campbell. Campbell sold it on around 1820 to David Wardrop who exploited the coal on the estate, and over the following decades the house and grounds were passed from one industrialist to another. (See The Glasgow Story for more on the history of the house and a photograph by Thomas Annan taken in 1870.)
Detail of the 1st Edition OS Map, surveyed in 1858, showing Belvidere House. Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland
John Carrick, the Glasgow City Architect, was responsible for drawing up plans for the new hospital. The first ‘ temporary shed’ was occupied on 19 December 1870. Eight timber pavilions were planned, four had been finished and partially occupied by Christmas, and two were expected to be completed before New Year.
In 1871 it was decided to build a separate smallpox hospital at Belvidere. Great lengths were taken to ensure that the most up-to-date features were incorporated in the design and many other hospitals were visited to this end, including the Herbert Hospital in London ‘reputed to be the finest specimen of a pavilion hospital in existence’. The local press had called for the design of the new hospital to reflect ‘the experience and results of modern science’, hoping that the authorities would not adopt the ‘old style of building tall structures’ but rather would follow the model of the recent temporary blocks at Parliamentary Road built on the pavilion principle ‘so strongly advocated by Miss Nightingale, and by writers on the subject of hospital accommodation’. The ‘temporary’ hospital blocks at Parliamentary Road were anticipated to last for around twenty years. There were those in the medical profession who considered that after occupation for that period of time all hospitals should be remodelled, if not entirely razed and rebuilt.
Nothing seems to have been done immediately but in 1874 plans were drawn up for the new permanent structures. Five single-storey, brick ward pavilions were built, though still described as ‘partially erected ‘ in December 1875, as well as the necessary ancillary buildings. These works were completed in 1877. The pavilions were aligned roughly north-south, and each was divided into four wards, two for acute cases in the centre, two for convalescents at the ends. The flooring was of close-jointed oak, the inner walls coated with Keen’s cement and the wards warmed by hot-water pipes and open fires. Roof-ridge ventilators (Boyle’s) were a distinctive feature on the outside of the buildings.
To the south-east was a large wash-house. Matrons’ and medical superintendent’s houses and dormitories for the nurses occupied a position at the north-east corner of the grounds, close to which was the morgue. The original kitchen block stood opposite the north end of the central pavilion, it was surmounted by a small spire, which also served as a bell tower and clock. It was designed to minimise contact between the kitchen staff and the nurses: a platform under a verandah on the southern side of the kitchen allowed the nurses to receive the food which was served through a window.
Bartholomew’s New Plan of Glasgow… 1882. Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland
The grounds were laid out into plots of shrubs and flowers by Mr M’Lellan, the Superintendent of Glasgow city parks. The team working alongside the architect were James Hannah, clerk of works; John Porter, builder; William Lightbody, joiner; Robert Nelson, plasterer; Wallace & Allan, plumbers and gas-fitters; John M’Ouatt & Sons, slaters; and James Comb & Son, heating engineers.
In 1879 work began on permanent buildings to replace the temporary sheds of the fever hospital on the south-east side of the site. Four brick pavilions were built to begin with. In 1882 the Medical Officer for Health in Glasgow, J. B. Russell, produced a ‘Memorandum on the Hospital Accommodation for Infectious Diseases in Glasgow’, which resulted in the further expansion of the site. Russell’s memorandum itemised the requirements for a large infectious diseases hospital and considered various details of its construction.
Over the course of the next five years pavilion after pavilion was added until there were thirteen altogether, providing 26 wards and a capacity for 390 patients. In addition there were ancillary buildings, providing kitchens and laundries etc, so that the hospital was as self-sufficient as possible, thus limiting the number of visitors to the site. The extended hospital was officially opened on 4 March 1887.
Extract from the 2nd edition OS map, revised 1892-3. Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland
The simple polychrome of thin, horizontal bands of white amongst the red bricks created a streaky bacon effect. This unusual construction for hospital buildings in Scotland gave them a utilitarian air reminiscent of Glasgow’s industrial buildings.
Aerial photograph taken in 1952, from Britain from Above. The river Clyde is in the foreground, the smallpox hospital to the left and fever hospital to the right.
In contrast to the polychrome-brick of most of the buildings, stone was used for the large administration block, which also contained the nurses home, recreation hall and senior staff residences. It was a large, somewhat austere building erected on the site of the original Belvidere house. The central range was designed as an echo of the house it replaced.
In 1929 a house was provided for the Medical Superintendent and a new observation ward was opened in 1930. After the inception of the National Health Service in 1948 various additions were made and changes in function introduced. Two important developments at Belvidere were the opening of the first Cobalt Therapy Unit in Scotland in February 1961 and in March 1973, the opening of the second Neutron Therapy Unit in Britain.
The hospital closed in 1999. After years of neglect the derelict buildings were mostly demolished in 2006 – all except the administration block and nurses’ home. Hypostyle Architects acting for Kier Homes Ltd designed the masterplan for the site development. Divided into three zones: high density urban blocks, urban terraced housing, and low density sub-urban housing. The high density section nearest the London Road comprises four-storey blocks of flats and three-storey town houses. The terraced housing, of two stories, creates a buffer zone between the flats and the low-density housing on the south side of the site. Original plans to convert the listed admin block were subsequently scrapped and permission granted to demolish the remaining shell of the central block for more low-density housing. The original master plan was for 351 residential units: 145 flats, 115 townhouses and 91 houses.
Sources:
Glasgow Herald, 24 Dec 1870 p.3;22 Nov 1875, p.5;3 July 1877 p.2; 5 March 1887, p.9: Strathclyde Regional Archives: Account of Proceedings at Inspection of New Hospital for Infectious Diseases erected at Belvidere, 1877: J. B. Russell, ‘Memorandum on the Hospital Accommodation for Infectious Diseases in Glasgow’, 1882: ‘Report of proceedings at Official Inspection…’, 1887 Corporation of City of Glasgow, Municipal Glasgow, Glasgow, 1914: The Builder, 4 Dec 1875, p.1083; British Architect, 22 July 1887, p.70: Hypostyle Architects website
Greenock in the mid-eighteenth century, depicted on Roy’s map of the Highlands. Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland
The dark, austere tower block that is Inverclyde Hospital opened in 1979. It superseded the Greenock Royal Infirmary, Eye Infirmary, Gateside Hospital, Duncan Macpherson and Broadstone Jubilee Hospitals which were all disposed of by the local Health Board in 1982. It was built just to the north of Larkfield Hospital, and that too was later replaced by the present Larkfield Unit. Later the last of Greenock’s pre-war hospitals, the Rankin Memorial, also closed and has since been demolished. This post gives a brief account of Greenock’s past hospitals, mostly demolished but a couple still stand in other use. Information on the lunatic asylum, poorhouses, and hospitals nearby can be found on the Inverclyde page of this website. Grateful thanks must go to the McLean Museum and Inverclyde Archives for kindly allowing me to use images from their online collections website (which I highly recommend).
Though Inverclyde hospital is perhaps not the most heart-warming in terms of architectural delight, Greenock can nevertheless be proud of its historic hospitals and of the people who built, funded, staffed and administered them. The earliest of these now-lost hospitals was the Royal Infirmary in Inverkip Street.
Postcard of the infirmary, probably early 20th century. Reproduced by permission of the McLean Museum and Art Gallery, Inverclyde Council
A dispensary had been established for the sick poor in 1801, but an outbreak of fever in 1806, the source of which was thought to be the crew of a Russian prize-vessel brought into the harbour that year, demonstrated the limitations of the dispensary and the necessity for a hospital. Plans for establishing an infirmary were put in train in 1807, the foundation stone was laid in 1808, and the building opened on 14 June 1809 – the dispensary becoming part of the new infirmary. In most instances the first generation of voluntary hospitals built in Scottish towns were designed by local architects. Greenock was no exception, although John Aird, who furnished the plans, was the local harbour engineer rather than an architect per se and it appears to be the only known building that he designed.
Greenock, from John Wood’s plan of the town of 1825, showing the new streets laid out for development in grids around the old town. These were said to be ‘filling up with rapidity’ at the time of Wood’s survey, although neither Macfarlane’s map of 1842, or the first edition OS map of 1857, bear this out. Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland.
The original infirmary was a good size for the time and the size of the town, providing 32 beds. Sir John Shaw Stewart, Lord of the Manor, gave the site, originally on the outskirts of the town, and the building costs amounted to around £1,815. It operated as a voluntary hospital funded by subscriptions, and was intended for cases of fever as well as general medical or surgical cases. Additional ground was given in 1815 to provide a larger airing ground or garden.
Wood’s Map
The image above shows a detail of Wood’s map, the infirmary is marked by the letter ‘n’ and is towards the bottom left of the map. To its north ‘o’ marks the United Session Church and ‘p’ is the Greenock brewery. Further to the east ‘r’ marks the relief chapel and ‘s’ the tabernacle. On the right hand side are the bridewell – ‘x’ and the Renfrewshire bank – ‘y’. At the top ‘c’ is the gaelic chapel. All this can be seen much more clearly on the National Library Maps collection site, which also has a link to the description of Greenock that accompanied Wood’s Atlas.
Detail from Andrew Macfarlane’s map of Greenock of 1842. Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland.
Extract from the OSTown Plan, 1857. The small building to the south was the wash house and dead house. Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland
Outbreaks of fever (i.e. an infectious disease) remained common in this harbour town, and were often severe. In 1829 the hospital was stretched beyond its capacity during an epidemic, resulting in the erection of a temporary fever hospital and plans made to extend the building. Two wings were added in 1830. By the mid-1840s the capacity of the infirmary had been increased to around 100 beds. An extraordinary number for the building depicted in the 1857 OS map (above).
Late-nineteenth century lantern slide of Greenock Infirmary and Duncan Street cemetery. Reproduced by permission of the McLean Museum and Art Gallery, Inverclyde Council
Additions were made in 1847 (James Dempster architect), and in 1869 the infirmary was enlarged (James Salmon & Son, architect). Further additions in 1938-43 by W. J. B. Wright included a nurses’ home.
Extract from the 2nd-edition OS map, surveyed 1896. Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland
One of the specialisms that developed at the infirmary was the treatment of diseases of the eye. In 1865 James Ferguson, merchant of Inverkip, had bequeathed £6,000 to provide an eye hospital but legal action ensued and it was not until 1879 that the trustees rented a consulting room in Greenock Infirmary and in the following year appointed an oculist. At last the Eye Infirmary was built in 1893 on Nelson Street.
Extract from the 2nd-edition OS map, revised in 1912, showing the eye infirmary to the west of the County Court and prison. Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland
The Eye Infirmary was designed by James B. Stewart with funds donated by Mr Anderson Rodger, a Port Glasgow ship builder. It also catered for ear, nose and throat patients until 1921. It is a handsome building, and survives, latterly as the Ardgowan Hospice.
Opening ceremony of the Eye Infirmary on Nelson Street, Greenock on the 19th August 1893. Reproduced by permission of the McLean Museum and Art Gallery, Inverclyde Council
Atmospheric colour slide of the Eye Infirmary taken in 1971 by Eugene Jean Méhat (1920-2000). Reproduced by permission of the McLean Museum and Art Gallery, Inverclyde Council
Public Health legislation in the late nineteenth century eventually made the provision of municipal hospitals for infectious diseases compulsory. For Greenock this resulted in the erection of Gateside Hospital, otherwise known as the Greenock and District Combination Hospital for infectious diseases. Built well outside the town, it was designed by Alexander Cullen of Hamilton and opened in 1908.
Extract from the 2nd-edition OS map, revised 1912. Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland
With the decline in need for hospitals for infectious diseases Gateside took on orthopaedic surgery, paediatric medicine and general medicine, before finally closing in 1979, superseded by Inverclyde Hospital.
Postcard of the combination hospital, Greenock. Possibly the most surprising hospital to find a postcard of, made even more bizarre with the MacGregor tartan and lucky heather.
A photograph of the nurses with Miss Gay, Matron to the left of Dr Phillips, taking tea in front of the hospital. A poignant scene, given the year 1913. Reproduced by permission of the McLean Museum and Art Gallery, Inverclyde Council
The photograph above shows the matron Miss Margaret Russell Gay, seated to the left of Dr Phillips. She was matron at Gateside for over 25 years, having been appointed when the hospital first opened. From Greenock, she trained at Greenock Royal Infirmary, and before taking up her appointment at Gateside was matron at Largs hospital. She also spent time in America as a private nurse, and was in San Francisco during the 1906 earthquake. She died in 1941 aged about 70.
Extract from the 2nd-edition OS map revised in 1938. Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland.
A Children’s Convalescent Home was built c.1900 on the edge of the smart western suburb of Greenock, on the corner of South and Forsyth Streets. It was opened by Mrs Andrew Carnegie – who had gifted £500 towards the home – in October 1902. It was still running during the Second World War. The building survives, now as private housing.
During the inter-war years Greenock’s hospital services increased greatly, but just before the end of the First World War, in 1917, Togo House was presented to the burgh of Greenock by Baillie Daniel Orr for use as a maternity hospital. This house was presumably on the site of present-day Togo Place, just off Dempster Road near the corner with Ann Street. It only had space for six patients, but in 1925 plans were approved to build a single-storey extension that would provide a proper maternity ward with 18 beds, and turn the house itself over to office and administrative use.
It was during this period that a convalescent home was built in association with the Royal Infirmary at Larkfield. Designed by Abercrombie & Maitland, it opened on 21 December 1929. At the opening ceremony, a Birmingham-made ceremonial silver key in a gold-coloured casket was presented to Miss Maggie Donald Rankin. The casket and key are now in the McLean Museum and Inverclyde Archives. Miss Rankin and her brother, Mathew, were major benefactors of Greenock. Mathew Rankin was partner in the local firm Rankin and Blackmore, engineers.
Extract from the 2nd-edition OS map, revised in 1938. Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland.
The home provided two, ten‑bed wards and eighteen private rooms. By 1943 it had become an auxiliary hospital treating all medical cases. It has considerable historic importance in terms of the development of hospital planning after the Second World War for having the first experimental ward designed by the Nuffield Provincial Hospitals Trust, built in 1951-6, and followed by one in Belfast at Musgrave Park built in 1956-9. The Trust began to develop a new type of ward unit in the early years after the war, looking abroad for inspiration where the old Nightingale style wards had made way for groups of patients’ rooms on one side of a corridor with ancillary facilities on the other – bathrooms, treatment rooms, sluice rooms etc. The Trust studied the daily routine of nurses and aimed to devise a new layout that would reduce the amount of walking for nurses, improve privacy for patients but not lose the necessary level of supervision of patients by the nursing staff. The ward unit that they came up with still provided a basic 32 beds (about the size of the largest Nightingale ward) but arranged with a combination of four-bed bays and single rooms on either side of a central corridor. (An illustration can be seen on the University of Cambridge School of Architecture website, and a plan is reproduced in Jonathan Hughes’ article in Medical History.)
Larkfield Hospital closed in 1979. That same year the new Inverclyde Royal Hospital was opened, built just to the north-west. The Larkfield unit for geriatric patients has since been built on the site.
Two more hospitals were built in Greenock in the later 1930s. The Ear, Nose & Throat Hospital in Eldon Street wasbuilt in 1937 by James Miller. It originally had accommodation for 20 beds and an out‑patients’ department. Eear nose and throat patients were initially taken into the Royal Infirmary and then moved out to the Eye Infirmary when it opened in 1894. In 1921 the old prison buildings in Nelson Street were acquired as a temporary measure until the new hospital was provided in Eldon Street. The Eldon Street hospital was demolished some time after 1990 and has been replaced by blocks of flats.
Housing has also been built on the site of the Rankin Memorial Hospital. This hospital opened on 17 August 1938 replacing the Togo House Maternity Hospital and the children’s hospital at Shaw Place (about the latter, I have found no information). Maggie Donald Rankin donated £41,000 to build and equip the new combined hospital.
Extract from the 2nd-edition OS map, revised in 1938. Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland
The architect was James Watson Ritchie, for H.M. Office of Works. It was designed as a long low, two‑storey building in three sections with maternity to the west and children to the east of the central administration section. All the blocks were rough‑cast. There was accommodation for 28 women and 28 children, and the 13 1/2-acre site was laid out by Greenock Corporation Parks Department.
A ceremonial silver key, made by Hendry & Co. of Birmingham, England, was presented to Miss Rankin on the opening of the hospital by the Burgh of Greenock Corporation. Like the other key presented to her on the opening of Larkfield Hospital, it has been preserved in the McLean Museum and Inverclyde Archives.
Following transfer to the National Health Service in 1948 plans were drawn up for extensions and a nurses’ home, and a special baby-care unit designed in 1979 by Ross, Doak and Whitelaw. The Rankin closed in 1994. (There was also a Rankine Memorial Hospital, established around 1901, in Yichang, China, named after Dr David Rankine, its founder. The nursing staff were deaconesses from the Church of Scotland.)
Sources: Greenock Royal Infirmary: Dictionary of Scottish Architects: The New Statistical Account of Scotland: Renfrew, Argyle… 1845, pp 474-6. Gateside Hospital:Common Services Agency, Glasgow, plans collection: Glasgow Herald, 29 Dec 1941, p.6. Greenock Eye Infirmary: F. Walker, South Clyde Estuary, Edinburgh, 1986. Togo House Maternity Hospital: Glasgow Herald, 20 May 1925, p.6. Ear, Nose & Throat Hospital: Architect & Building News, 1937. Rankin Memorial Hospital: McLean Museum and Inverclyde Archives: Dictionary of Scottish Architects: The Builder, 23 Jan 1948, p.125; 27 Feb 1948, p.264; 11 Jan 1952, p.101; 30 April 1934, p.786: The Scotsman, 18 Aug 1938, p.6: Aberdeen Journal, 2 May 1907, p.3 for the Chinese Rankin Memorial Hospital.
I was delighted to receive three booklets this week from an ongoing series produced by the History of Highland Hospitals project set up in 2008. The first to be published was The Hospitals of Skye in 2011. Written by Jim Leslie and his son Steve, this slim volume provides a detailed history of the seven hospitals known to have existed on the island: the Skye Poorhouse, Portree and Ross Memorial Hospitals in Portree; Gesto Hospital, Edinbane; Martin Memorial Hospital, Uig; Mackinnon Memorial Hospital, Broadford, and a tiny smallpox hospital at Stein.
The buildings have been thoroughly researched, there are plentiful illustrations and the text is fully referenced with end-notes and footnotes. The stories of the hospitals and the poorhouse are written engagingly with an emphasis on their social history. This is mostly concerned with the staff and founders of the hospitals, but there are also details of patient numbers, including the detail that Gesto Hospital, in 1912, was reported as being full, and amongst the patients was a Welsh tramp with a broken leg in the attic.
I have had an enjoyable weekend up-dating the entries on the Highlands page of this website, adding in new information and correcting a few errors that I had made. Portree hospital, pictured above, had been extended since I visited it in the 1980s. It was built in the 1960s, and had a wonderful almost Art Deco-style bowed entrance porch with a port-hole window, but this has been altered and its character lost (I don’t think portholes on the door make up for the loss). Otherwise it is an endearing building and an early example of an entirely new NHS hospital.
The Gesto Hospital closed in 2007 and has stood empty ever since. As Carol Walker comments on her photograph above – what a pity! I hadn’t realised that the harling was not original – the book contains a photograph of the building from the 1920s (it is also on the front cover of the book) showing the exposed masonry with its neat cherry-caulking. As to the Stein Smallpox Hospital, that was completely new to me – a prefabricated Speirs & Company building that was never actually used and was only in existence between 1905 and about 1919.
As the Leslies’ book was published five years ago there have been some further developments in the lives of these buildings. I was sorry to see that plans were passed last year by the Highland County Council to demolish the old poorhouse – built in 1859 and designed by William Joass, an architect about whom I should like to learn more. The poorhouse had never been heavily used, and was turned into a hostel for school children in the 1930s (the Margaret Carnegie Hostel).
The Combination Poorhouse, Portree. Extract from the 1st-edition OS map, surveyed in 1875. Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland
The John Martin Hospital at Uig was a youth hostel in 2011, but was closed and sold off around 2013, while the Ross Memorial Hospital, which had been turned into an arts centre in the 1980s and had closed in 2007, has since been remodelled and extended to become the new West Highland College, opened in 2013 as part of the University of the Highlands and Islands.
There are currently two community hospitals on Skye, at Portree and Broadford (the Mackinnon Memorial). A new health centre was built next to the Mackinnon Memorial Hospital in 2012 by the NHS Highlands Estates Department. I rather like the health centre. It reminds me of a boat-house or perhaps even a smoke-house, though that might not have been what the architects were aiming for. In 2014 plans were announced to build a new community hospital on the island at Broadford with a reduction in services at Portree, sparking a ‘Save Portree Hospital’ campaign (there is to be a protest march on 20 June, if you feel like joining in). It seems likely that the Portree hospital building will be replaced. I hope that it will not share the same fate as the former poorhouse.
J. C. Leslie and S. J. Leslie, History of Highland HospitalsThe Hospitals of Skye, 2011, Old Manse Books, Avoch, Scotland ISBN 978-0-9569002-0-3 £5
Back in February this year, the local press relayed proposals to transform Woolmanhill Hospital, Aberdeen, into a hotel and homes. The scheme, submitted by the developer Charlie Ferrari, is for a 52-bed boutique hotel, 27 serviced apartments, 32 residential apartments and just 10 affordable flats. Ferrari has set up a company CAF Properties (Woolmanhill) Ltd to put in a joint application with NHS Grampian to Aberdeen City Council. The hotel and serviced apartments would be sold to the G1 Group, owners of the Palm Court Hotel in Aberdeen. Ferrari was quoted in the Aberdeen Evening Express saying that he hoped to bring the site back to life and make it a ‘vibrant addition to the cityscape’, recognising that it was valued for its heritage. The proposal is to renovate four buildings on the site, and incorporates a lighting display in the central courtyard. The original hospital building would become the hotel, the Stephen Building, would be converted into the serviced apartments while the Victoria building would be turned into flats. The affordable housing element is destined for the former archive building to the north of the site.
The medical block, fronting Woolmanhill, photographed in 1964
All four main buildings are listed at grade A. The oldest of the four was designed by Archibald Simpson and is an elegant neo-Classical granite building of 1840, near the centre of Aberdeen. Comparable to the earlier Gray’s Hospital at Elgin, it was designed as an impressive public building as much as a functional hospital. To the rear of Simpson’s block are two ranges, largely dating from 1887, which create a roughly triangular court. Just as the Infirmary at Woolmanhill was replaced nearly a century later by the Foresterhill complex, the Woolmanhill building replaced an earlier infirmary built a century before.
Façade of the Royal Infirmary, Aberdeen. Engraving by W. Banks & son. Wellcome Library, London. Reproduced under Creative Commons Attribution only licence CC BY 4.0
The Aberdeen Infirmary was founded in 1739 and the foundation stone of the first building on the Woolmanhill site was laid in January 1740. It was of simple construction, built to the designs of William Christall who had visited Edinburgh and Glasgow to view William Adam’s Edinburgh Infirmary and Glasgow’s Town’s Hospital, before completing his own plans. It opened in 1742, providing twenty beds, including accommodation for lunatics, and had cost £484. No illustration of this building appears to have survived. On the completion of Simpson’s new Infirmary the old building was demolished.
The former royal Infirmary on the OS Town Plan surveyed in 1867 CC-BY (NLS)
In 1887 a major extension and reconstruction scheme was begun. The site formed an awkward wedge and added to this difficulty the managers wished to avoid interfering with the existing buildings. H. Saxon Snell, the well-known hospital architect in London, was consulted and at his suggestion Simpson’s building was converted into an administrative and clinical area, with new ward pavilions built to the rear. He also recommended retaining the separate fever block at the rear as part of the new surgical block. Known as the Jubilee Extension Scheme, the new blocks opened in 1897 and provided a new surgical block, medical block, pathology and laundry blocks. W. & J. Smith & Kelly, the Aberdeen firm of architects, carried out the work.
View from the south-west, photographed in May 2015 by RCAHMS
The new administration department, formed out of the former hospital, was also to provide accommodation for nurses:
“The first thing in a good modern hospital was to have the best possible accommodation for nurses… In some of the larger hospitals such as that of Marylebone every nurse has a bedroom to herself. The committee do not propose to go to that extent but they propose that everyone of the higher nurses… shall have a room to herself, and that the others shall be accommodated two in one room.”
It is perhaps worth noting that the Marylebone hospital referred to in London was in fact a workhouse infirmary. It is a measure of the changing attitudes to hospital and nursing provision for paupers that their nurses were offered better accommodation than those in a Scottish Royal Infirmary.
Plans of Aberdeen Royal Infirmary published in H. C. Burdett’s Hospitals and Asylums of the World, 1893, portfolio of plans. Above: the northern half of the site, with the new block on the left. Below the original building showing its new room uses.
Ground plan of Aberdeen Royal Infirmary, from H. C. Burdett, Hospitals and Asylums of the World, 1893
Ground plan of Aberdeen Royal Infirmary, from H. C. Burdett, Hospitals and Asylums of the World, 1893.
Burdett classified the layout and plan of Aberdeen Royal Infirmary as ‘composite or heap of buildings’, which was his class 4, class 1 being pavilion plan hospitals, class 2 block plan and class 3 corridor plan. There is a suggestion that the ‘heap of buildings’ class was the worst type. The plans were published before works on the new buildings had been completed.
Operating Theatre, Aberdeen Royal Infirmary, from the Handbook and Guide to Aberdeen of 1914
Amongst the later additions were new operating theatres (pictured above), and out-patients’ department (below)
The out-patients’ department, photographed in 1964
Out-Patient Department, Aberdeen Royal Infirmary, from the Handbook and Guide to Aberdeen of 1914
The out-patients’ department (demolished) was opened in November 1912, situated to the east of the infirmary on the other side of Woolmanhill. A large top-lit waiting hall was centrally placed off which were situated admission rooms, dispensary, Ear and Throat, Dental and Skin clinics, bacteriological and sterilising rooms, operating rooms for minor surgery, dressing and recovery rooms etc. A basement housed stores and heating chamber, and on the upper floor were two 4-bed wards for the Ear & Throat department and some staff accommodation.
Extract from the 25-inch OS map revised in 1926. The out-patients’ block occupies the island site north of the Drill Hall, bounded by St Andrew Street, Woolmanhill, Andrew and John Streets. Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland.
Following the opening of the new Royal Infirmary on the Foresterhill site in the 1920s Woolmanhill was retained and there were still in-patient facilities here until relatively recently alongside a number of out-patient clinics. Since the closure of the hospital was agreed in 1999, health services have been winding down on the site and gradually relocating. The last remaining clinics are for ENT and audiology, which are due to move out this year.
[Sources: Evening Express, 4 Feb 2016, online, 27 March 2016, online: British Medical Association, Aberdeen 1914, A Handbook and Guide, Aberdeen, 1914]
Bak in 2016 the future of the former Galashiels Cottage Hospital seemed to be uncertain once again. When the Borders District General Hospital opened at Melrose in 1988, it had been intended that the cottage hospitals at Galashiels and Selkirk should close permanently, but the local health board changed its mind and decided it could find a new use for the buildings. For Galashiels, that new use was a rehabilitation unit for people with long-term mental health problems, and it re-opened as such under the name Galavale House. But more recently there have been concerns that the standard of accommodation is not longer fit for purpose, and a scheme was under consideration in 2015 to relocate services to Crumhaugh House, Hawick. However, when I visited the Galashiels in September, it was still very much in use.
In 2006 Galavale House and lodge were listed category C (s) for their architectural and local historic interest. The origins of the hospital date back to 1891 when subscriptions were first raised for a cottage hospital in the town. Originally it was intended to be for accident cases, but in the end it took in medical and surgical cases, though paupers were excluded. Sick paupers were cared for at the local poorhouse.
Galashiels Cottage Hospital, engraved view from Building News, 1893
Built to designs by John Wallace of Edinburgh, the hospital was formally opened by the Earl of Dalkeith in November 1893. Wallace was originally from the Borders, and the few architectural commissions that he is known to have carried out were all in this area. In 1891, the year before he was commissioned to design the cottage hospital, he had designed Blynlee Tower in Galashiels.
The plan below was not as executed, only the front wards were built, so at first there were just two wards with six beds each, and two single wards for private patients. The local building firm of Robert Hall & Co. carried out the construction work.
Detail showing the proposed plan of the hospital.
Extract from the Galashiels & Selkirk Almanac and Directory of 1903
As built, the hospital comprised an appealing small scale building. The wide single‑storey centrepiece of the main block has generous roofs with dormers, and the eaves are supported on cast‑iron columns to create a verandah. The wards in the projecting outer bays are lit by broad bay windows.
A small nurses’ home was built on the site with thirteen bedrooms in 1929-30 to designs by the local architects J. & J. Hall, John Hall was the nephew of Robert Hall, the builder of the original hospital. In 1938 extensions were built, in sympathetic style, to the south-west (Hume Ward) and north. In that year four beds were set aside for maternity cases.
Extract from the 25-inch OS map revised in 1930. Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland
Vale of Leven Hospital, at Alexandria in Dunbartonshire, Scotland, was the first new hospital to be completed in Britain under the National Health Service at a cost of around £1 million. It was built in 1951-5 on the site adjacent to the Henry Brock Cottage Hospital to designs by John Keppie and Henderson and J. L. Gleave. Joseph Gleave was the lead architect on the project, carrying out extensive planning and constructional research.
The hospital was to accommodate 150 patients, and comprised eight standard units, built of pre-cast concrete on a modular system. Six of the units housed wards the other two ancillary services. General medical and surgical wards were provided, together with theatres, radiological department and laboratories, out-patient, casualty department, nurses’ teaching school and pharmacy. The general wards were designed on a standard pattern but adaptable for specialisms such as ENT or eye diseases. It was also designed with adaptability in mind: the original flat-roofed, two storey ward units were intended to allow for the addition of a third storey. [1]
After the Second World War, although there was a desperate need for new accommodation and to overhaul existing hospital buildings which had suffered from a lack of maintenance during the war, restrictions on capital expenditure meant that it was many years before much new building could take place. The original allocation of funds had to be curtailed in 1949, and then cut almost completely the following year. Thus is 1950 most building work was limited to essential maintenance and to the adaptation of existing buildings, despite the recognition that many of the buildings taken over at the inauguration of the National Health Service fell far short of hospital standards for that time. Limited funding was compounded by scarcity of materials, and a ban on new, non-residential building imposed in November 1951.
The Henry Brock Hospital had opened in 1924 on the outskirts of Alexandria in a converted private house, with a large area of open ground to its west – where the new general hospital was eventually built. Beyond the original bequest of £15,000 to establish the cottage hospital, further funds were gifted by Hugh Brock, brother of the founder, who left a legacy of £2,000, and John Somerville, of Camstradden, Luss, Loch Lomondside, who bequeathed a further £1,000 to the hospital in 1929.[2] Dunbartonshire County Council, with Dumbarton and Clydebank Town Councils, had resolved to build a new 150-bed general hospital in the 1930s and were considering possible sites towards the end of 1937.
Aerial photograph of Vale of Leven Hospital taken in 2015 by RCAHMS
The outbreak of war in 1939 called a halt to most building projects in Britain that were not related to the war effort. When the prospect of war had become apparent, plans were made for the organisation of emergency hospital accommodation. In 1944, as the end of the war was coming into sight, the Department of Health for Scotland commissioned a survey of the existing hospital resources, covering all local authority and voluntary hospitals, and public assistance institutions. Mental hospitals came under the Board of Control which conducted a similar but separate survey. The Scottish Hospitals Survey was published after the war, and many of its recommendations formed the basis of post-war planning. .[3]
The priorities in the early years of the NHS in Scotland were to increase the number of maternity beds and improve staff quarters and radiology departments. One of the first new maternity blocks built under the NHS was at Seafield Hospital, Buckie, which opened in 1950 providing a much needed additional 14 beds. Plans were also in hand for a new maternity hospital at Hawkhead, Paisley. Out-patients’ clinics and health centres were also some of the earliest new buildings built by the NHS in Scotland. In Dumbarton a new TB clinic and x-ray department were built at the existing Infectious Diseases Hospital. The first health centres were at Sighthill, Edinburgh built in 1951-3, and Stranraer in 1954-5. [4]
Aerial perspective of the proposed new hospital, 1954
Vale of Leven Hospital was built in the face of post-war financial constraints because it formed a part of the Civil Defence Programme, initiated in response to the Cold War. Glasgow was considered likely to be a prime target once again. Plans were made for the potential evacuation of all hospitals in Glasgow and the surrounding area. Existing hospitals could serve as cushion hospitals, but there was nothing available for the area to the north-west of Glasgow. Alexandria was the ideal location.
Aerial photograph of Vale of Leven Hospital from the 1960s. Henry Brock cottage hospital in foreground to the left
Taking a virtual tour of Vale of Leven Hospital in 2016 via Google street view, some of the outlying parts of the original buildings were in a poor state of repair, particularly around the out-patients’ department. Other areas have been refurbished and modernised, yet retain a sense of their original appearance. Despite its historic and architectural importance the hospital has not been designated as a listed building.
Just to the east of the hospital a new health centre opened in 2013, the Vale Centre for Health and Care. It is a two-storey building, containing GP and dental surgeries, child and mental health clinics. Constructed on a steel frame, it has timber and zinc cladding and glass curtain walls. Once Vale of Leven Hospital looked just as sparkling as the new health centre, and might have fared better over the last sixty years had money been spent more consistently on its maintenance. The same could be said of the Finsbury Health Centre, another seminal health care building, designed by Lubetkin and Tecton and built in 1937-8 for the London Borough of Finsbury. There too a lack of funding for a full restoration has left parts of the building in a sorry state.
Fiona Sinclair, Scotstyle, p.98: PP, Report of the Department of Health for Scotland… 1951, c.7921, p.32.
Dundee Evening Telegraph, 6 Nov 1929, p.4: Sunday Post, 10 August 1924, p.3: Western Daily Press, 12 June 1924, p.3
10th Annual Report of the Department of Health for Scotland, 1938 PP Cmd.5969
Miles Glendinning, Ranald MacInnes, Aonghus MacKecknie, A History of Scottish Architecture…, : Alistair G. F. Gibb, Off-site Fabrication Pre-assembly and Modularisation, 1999, p.13: David Stark, Charlies Rennie Mackintosh and Co., 1854 to 2004, 2004
For some now unfathomable reason, I managed to lose my gazetteer entries for hospitals in Scotland beginning with ‘N’. One of the tasks, therefore, that I have set myself is to rediscover the missing hospitals. They include some important buildings, such as Nithbank Hospital – the second incarnation of Dumfries Royal Infirmary – and most of the hospital buildings in Nairn. Today I have been on a virtual tour of Nairn, and have begun updating the Highland page accordingly.
Extract of the 1st-edition OS map, surveyed 1868. Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland
The earliest hospital in Nairn was the precursor of the present Town and County Hospital. It is now a private house (Craig Royston). It was designed by Thomas Mackenzie and was intended for fever cases. Building work began in 1846, the plans having been drawn up some two years earlier when the scheme was first mooted and the site purchased, but progress was slow.
Detail of the above map, showing the tree-lined drive up to the hospital, a shelter belt of trees around the edge of the buildings as well as the retaining walls, and a circular drive on the west side.
The design, however, was met with enthusiasm in the local press, where it was described as ‘beautiful and appropriate’. A ball was held in Anderson’s Hall in September to raise funds towards the completion of the hospital, and there was much approval of a gift of £20 from the Earl of Cawdor. Originally it provided just twelve beds, though later a wing was built to the rear. The hospital continued to serve the town but by the early 1900s it had become out-dated.
Extract of the 6-inch OS map, revised 1938. The Town and County Hospital is just north of Larkfield House, to the left is the poorhouse built in 1860-2 (marked as a Public Assistance Institution, later this was known as Balblair Home, now demolished). Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland
In 1903 the decision was taken to erect a new hospital. The scheme was boosted by the promised donation of £4,000 by a native of the town, Alexander Mann, then living in Guayaquil (Equador), South America. This sum largely covered the cost of construction, and he later also gifted £1,000 to purchase the site. The hospital was designed by William Mackintosh and built in 1904-6 (dated 1906 in the central pediment). John Gifford didn’t mince his words in the Pevsner Guide, describing the hospital as ‘small but stodgy Wrennaissance’. The original building has been retained, used for dental services, as part of a larger complex including a new community hospital.
There was also the Northern Counties Convalescent Home on the outskirts of Nairn, built in 1892 to designs by Ross and Macbeth. It continued to operate throughout the twentieth century, though it was never transferred to the NHS. It finally closed in 2004. The building seems to survive, now a private house.
Extract of the 2nd-edition OS map, surveyed 1904. Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland
Any photographs of these buildings, or information on other missing hospitals beginning with ‘N’, would be most gratefully received. The Town and County Hospital can be seen from Google Street view, as can the diminutive former Northern Counties Convalescent Home. The original Nairn Hospital is hidden behind its garden wall.
For a full history of the hospitals of Nairn with many historic photographs of the buildings see J.C. & S. J. Leslie, Hospitals of Nairn, 2012.
(Sources: Inverness Courier, 7 Feb 1844, p.3; Nairnshire Mirror and General Advertiser, 11 July 1846, p.3: John Gifford, The Buildings of Scotland. Highlands and Islands, 1992: Aberdeen Journal, 29 July 1903, p.3; 16 Aug 1906, p.6: Inverness Courier, 28 June 1892)
Entrance gates to Bethlem Hospital, 1896 from The Queen’s London : a Pictorial and Descriptive Record of the Streets, Buildings, Parks and Scenery of the Great Metropolis (Public domain, from Wikimedia Commons)
Bethlem Hospital remained in St George’s Fields, Southwark from 1815 to 1930. In that time numerous additions and alterations were made to the building, but the area around had also developed and changed almost beyond recognition. In the early nineteenth century it was airy and open, with few houses and market gardens in the immediate vicinity. It was on the other side of the river from the densely built-up urban centres of Westminster and the City, and on the outskirts of Southwark itself. But it did not remain a rural or even suburban idyll for long, as industrialisation and the population expansion of the capital brought waves of building activity.
Greenwood’s map of c.1830 showing the area around Bethlem Hospital
Greenwood’s map of London of 1830 captures the moment before this expansion, half a century later and Bethlem hospital had been engulfed. Population density increased as the century wore on, with the usual pattern of housing intended for single families increasingly occupied by two or three.
Booth’s Poverty Map. Printed Map Descriptive of London Poverty 1898-1899. Sheet 9. Inner Southern District. Reproduced courtesy of LSE Library
Booth’s poverty map of London of the late 1890s showed that although those living in the immediate surroundings of the hospital were classed as fairly comfortable, on the other side of the Lambeth Road were pockets of the lowest class, the vicious and semi-criminal, amongst housing that was almost entirely occupied by the poor, or very poor.
Broadmoor Asylum for Criminal Lunatics, from The Illustrated London News, 1867
Other changes had occurred during the century or so that Bethlem was at St George’s Fields. Legislation had been introduced to encourage the establishment of lunatic asylums for paupers early in the nineteenth century (the Lunacy Acts of 1808 and 1815), and this reduced the need for Bethlem to cater for the poorer class of patient. The County Asylums Act of 1845 made the establishment of pauper asylums compulsory, and this, coupled with a new regime headed by Dr W. Charles Hood, the first resident medical officer, saw a shift towards caring for a higher class of patient. This was consolidated after the opening in 1863 of Broadmoor for criminal lunatics, removing another class of patient formerly accommodated at Bethlem. Improvements to the accommodation were made, the comforts of home introduced and a convalescent home built at Witley (1866-9, designed by Sydney Smirke). [1]
The men’s ward of the infirmary at Bethlem Hospital, 1860 by Frederick Vizetelly, reproduced under Creative Commons Attribution only licence CC BY 4.0 from Wellcome Library, London
So by the early twentieth century the type of patient at Bethlem had changed, and the locality had become more densely urban, but more importantly than either of these in prompting a move to a new site was the old-fashioned design of the building and the constant demands and cost of maintaining the ageing fabric of the asylum.
Female workroom, Bethlem Hospital. Wood engraving probably by F. Vizetelly after F. Palmer, 1860. Wellcome Library, London. Reproduced under Creative Commons Attribution only licence CC BY 4.0
Asylum design had moved on since 1815, and a century later the ideal form for a mental hospital was considered to be the colony plan or villa system, comprising detached buildings set in landscaped grounds. Colony plan asylums were developed in Germany from the late 1870s but had their origins in the Gheel Colony in Belgium. Gheel had traditionally originated in medieval times as a place of pilgrimage to the shrine of St Dymphne which had gained a reputation for curing the insane. Pilgrims were boarded in the village and gradually it developed into a mental colony. In the nineteenth century the Belgian government placed its administration under the control of a Commissioner and Board of Governors. [2]
Plan of Altscherbitz Asylum, Germany, from Sibbald’s Plans of Modern Asylums for the Insane Poor, 1897
One of the most influential of the later colonies, was the Alt Scherbitz (now Altscherbitz) village asylum near Leipzig, established in 1876 for 960 patients. Its layout was published by John Sibbald, a Commissioner in Lunacy for Scotland, in 1897 in his Plans of Modern Asylums for the Insane Poor. At Altscherbitz, the site was naturally divided in two by the high road between Halle and Leipzig and this separation was used to divide the medical and non-medical sections. Gender informed the first level of classification, with the women’s houses to the west together with the kitchen and laundry, and the men to the east where a brick works provided manual labour.
The ground plan of Brislington House, near Bristol, a private asylum established by Dr Fox. The patients occupied detached houses arranged as a terrace. The plan dates from 1806. Reproduced from Wikimedia Commons.
This colony plan was welcomed as it seemed to offer a solution to new ideas about how the patients’ environment promoted recovery or cure. It aimed to provide recognizably domestic surroundings, emulating the home environment rather than reminding the patient that they were in an institution. There were earlier precedents for this, but in small private asylums such as Brislington House near Bristol, built in 1806.
View over to Craighouse, the colony built in 1889-94 as part of the Royal Edinburgh Asylum. Craighouse in the middle distance, ‘Morningside and Craighouse’ by Pascal Blachier, taken in 2007, imaged licensed under CC BY 2.0
The first time the colony plan was attempted on a large scale and at a public institution was at Craighouse, built as an annexe to the Royal Edinburgh Asylum in 1889-94, although this was for paying patients. It was designed by Sydney Mitchell in close collaboration with Thomas Clouston, the asylum’s Medical Superintendent, to give architectural form to his ideas on the cure of mental illness. The buildings revived something of the palatial aspect that had largely disappeared from asylum architecture since Hooke’s Bethlem. Clouston wanted variety, in the colours of the building materials, in the architectural details, of size and of scale. Believing that patients associated phases of their illnesses with their surroundings, he particularly wanted to be able to move convalescent patients to a new environment.
Poorer patients got their taste of the colony system a little bit later at the Crichton Royal in Dumfries, where detached houses were added in the grounds during the early 1900s. Sydney Mitchell, was the architect, and he, along with a deputation from the asylum’s Board of Management, had set out in 1897 to visit Altscherbitz and similar asylums at Biesdorp and Lichtenberg near Berlin. Such missions became increasingly common. In 1899 a deputation of the Aberdeen District Lunacy Board made a tour of continental asylums before commissioning a design for their new district asylum on the Altscherbitz model.
The former Bangour Asylum, photographed in the late 1980s. The church was added later, though always intended as the focal point of the colony.
Further colony plan asylums were built in Scotland at Bangour, which opened in 1906 serving Edinburgh, where a competition was held for the design which specified Altscerhbitz as the model, and Dykebar at Paisley which opened in 1909. Bangour is particularly significant for Bethlem: its architect, Hippolyte J. Blanc, had as one of his assistants working on the asylum plans, John Manuel, who later worked with Charles E. Elcock, architect of the new Bethlem Hospital. [3]
In England colonies were built around the same time, but not as yet for general mental hospitals. Instead they were deemed appropriate in the first instance for epileptic colonies. In 1884 the National Society for the Employment of Epileptics established a home at Chalfont St Peter in Buckinghamshire. It began with just one villa, a temporary iron structure, to which further villas were gradually added.
Leybourne Grange Colony, Kent County Council, W. H. Robinson architect, built about 1935 for the so-called mentally deficient.
But the colony plan was most widely adopted for a new breed of asylum ushered in by the Mental Deficiency Act of 1913. A Royal Commission had been appointed in 1904 to look into the care of the feeble-minded. This at least spoke out against the sterilization of those deemed mentally deficient that was being advocated by the Eugenics Education Society, and it was this Commission which resulted, eventually, in the 1913 Act. Amongst other things, the Act sought to define mental deficiency which was considered to be present from birth and incurable, as opposed to mental illness which was usually contracted later in life and deemed curable. The Act legislated for the provision of accommodation, care and protection of the former group whose removal from undesirable surroundings was thought necessary ‘in their own interests and that of society’. The Board of Control, which replaced the Commissioners in Lunacy in 1914, recommended the colony system for these new institutions, as it allowed ‘better classification and training’ and ensured that the inmates were happier and more contented than in institutions of the barracks type.
Aerial perspective of Bethlem Royal Hospital showing proposed layout of the buildings, from commemorative booklet produced for the laying of the foundation stone.
It was a combination of these influences which lead to the adoption of a colony plan for the new Bethlem hospital at Monks Orchard. It was the first new mental hospital designed in England since the war. Elcock & Sutcliffe were appointed in February 1926 to work alongside the hospital surveyor, John Cheston. Charles Ernest Elcock was the key figure behind the design, which he hoped would ‘make a leap forward’. However, his plans still had to meet the approval of the Board of Control. While the Board was in favour of colonies, it disapproved of Modernism, thought flat roofs should be shunned, and was most comfortable with the blandest of Neo-Georgian styles.
Administration Block, Bethlem Royal Hospital, photographed in 2008
Unsurprisingly relations were often frosty between Elcock and the Board’s architect John Kirkland, and indeed Sir Frederick Willis, Chairman of the Board from 1921 to 1928. Willis criticized the ‘generous scale’ of the rooms, which he suggested were due to Elcock trying to balance the buildings, while Kirkland queried the necessity for Turkish Baths, and took a great deal of convincing over the flat roofs, which were only used on the peripheral buildings on the site. After much wrangling, the amended designs were approved and detailed drawings submitted in December 1928. [4]
It may have been the pressure of work involved in the Bethlem job that prompted Elcock to seek an assistant in 1928. He appointed Ralph Maynard Smith, a young man in his mid-twenties, who was as much an artist and a poet as an architect. Maynard Smith had studied at the Architectural Association, and spent a brief time working with the architect Michael Waterhouse immediately before joining Elcock & Sutcliffe. There undoubtedly were other assistants in Elcock’s office, making it difficult to know who did what in the design and planning process. A building at Bethlem where Smith’s influence may be felt is the chapel. It is a beguiling building, quite unlike the many hum-drum Gothic asylum chapels of earlier years. Its design was obviously considered a success as it was elaborated upon a few years later at Runwell Hospital in Essex, also by Elcock & Sutcliffe.
Interior of Runwell hospital chapel, probably photographed soon after the building was completed, from a collection of negatives at the hospital leant to the author.
Stylistically Bethlem presents something of a mix, from the conservative administration block, with its hipped roof and Neo-Georgian simplicity to the starkly modern boiler house and flat-roofed patients’ accommodation blocks and treatment unit. Elcock laid an emphasis on the setting to give attractiveness to the buildings with ‘pleasing roads, avenues, flower borders, etc’. [5]
Architectural perspective sketch of the quiet patients’ unit, unlike the Neo-Georgian administraton block, most of the patients’ villas had flat roofs, and if not strictly modernist, in this sketch, taken from a brochure produced by the hospital, there seems to be an echo of contemporary Dutch or German architecture
Elcock set new standards in the scale and type of accommodation he provided which included laboratories, hydrotherapy facilities, a lecture room for students, and a separate treatment and research block. The sexes were no longer strictly segregated either: male and female patients shared buildings, from the more severe ‘excited’ patients to convalescents. Elcock researched his subject thoroughly, touring the country to visit the best new buildings added to older hospitals, and consulting medical staff.
Architectural perspective of the Treatment and Research Unit, Bethlem Royal Hospital brochure.
In the end the design was compromised both by the restrictions imposed by the Board of Control and the necessary cost-cutting in the face inflation in the years after the General Strike. But if it wasn’t quite the magnificent hospital originally proposed, it was certainly well-equipped and incorporated many innovative features. There were four main villas for patients, two for quiet cases, one for ‘excited’ patients, the fourth for convalescents. Nearly all the patients were accommodated in single rooms, in line with private general hospitals and in contrast to tendency towards dormitories in municipal mental hospitals. In addition to the patients villas there were the usual service buildings – kitchens, boiler house, stores etc, and the innovative Treatment and Research unit, which provided hydrotherapy, psychotherapy, dental and electrical treatment, pharmacy, and operating theatre. [6]
Today the core buildings are little altered, but many of the outlying buildings have had many alterations and newer buildings have been added to the site to meet the changing needs of mental health care. In recognition of the hospital’s historic importance there is a museum on the site, the Museum of the Mind, which opened in 2015.
References
Survey of London, vol.25 St George the Martyr, Southwark and St Mary Newton, Ida Darlington ed. 1955, p.78 (online version at British History Online): Jonathan Andrews, Asa Briggs, Roy Porter, Penny Tucker and Keir Waddington, The History of Bethlem, Routledge, London and New York, 1997, pp.503ff
H. Richardson ‘A Continental Solution to the Planning of Lunatic Asylums 1900-1940’ in J. Frew and D. Jones (eds) Scotland and Europe, Architecture and Design 1850-1940, 1991
H. Richardson ‘Charles Ernest Elcock’ in Essays in Scots and English Architectural History, 2009, p.122
Bethlem Royal Hospital Archives, Special Commitee Minutes, 1928 pp. 194, 196-7, 291
Bethlem Royal Hospital Archives, Special Commitee Minutes, 1926-7, p.34
Probably the best source that I have been using for updating the Scottish Hospitals Survey is the National Library of Scotland’s map images. Maps are always key to charting the history and development of buildings, settlements and indeed the landscape. And the best thing of all is that the NLS is freely available to all. It is a wonderful resource.
Athole & Breadalbane Union Poorhouse (see Perth & Kinross). Extract from the 1st Edition OS Map, surveyed in 1863. Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland
Many of the maps, and for me particularly the first edition Ordinance Survey maps and large scale town plans, are things of beauty as well as mines of information. Being so used to the grey tones of most nineteenth-century OS maps, the vibrant pinks and reds of the buildings, buff or ochre paths and roads, and the blues of river and sea, are also a joy.
Kelso dispensary, Roxburgh Street, founded in 1777 (see Borders). Extract from the 1st edition OS map, surveyed in 1858. Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland
For anyone interested in public buildings these maps are especially useful as they give ground plans, and often room uses as well.
Barony or Barnhill Poorhouse was completed in 1853, so this map was produced just a few years after it opened (see Glasgow). Extract from 1857 Town Plan of Glasgow, reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland
Detail of the OS large-scale Town Plans, showing the central part of Barony Poorhouse.
I have never been sure about how to interpret the mapping of gardens, some seem too generic to be completely accurate representations, although the general layouts, or features such as embankments, paths, ditches etc. are more likely to be as existing. If anyone knows more, please do enlighten me. Looking at the detail of Barony Poorhouse above, the arrangement in the airing yard with diagonal paths leading up to a viewing area with seats seems too unusual not to be an accurate depiction of an actual feature.
The former Crichton Royal Asylum (see Dumfries & Galloway). Extract from the 1st edition OS map, surveyed in 1856. Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland
The Crichton Royal – what at first site might look like elaborately laid out formal gardens around the cruciform building are in fact the earthworks of the different airing grounds.
Detail of the former Crichton Royal Asylum. Extract from the 1st edition OS map, surveyed in 1856. Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland
Zooming in it becomes clearer. The airing grounds were walled enclosures, to prevent escape, but in order to allow the patients to see over the confining walls the ground within was built up to form a flat-topped mound. Bowling greens are shown close by the Crichton Royal and the Royal Edinburgh Asylum (below).
Royal Edinburgh Asylum (see Edinburgh). Extract from the large-scale town plans, sheet 50, surveyed in 1852. Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland
Comparing different editions of the maps show how an institution was added to and changed. Between 1852 (above) and 1876 (below) wings were added to the main asylum building to the west, extending into the walled airing grounds.
Royal Edinburgh Asylum. Extract from the OS Large-scale Town Plans 1876. Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland
The grounds of the East Division of the Royal Edinburgh Asylum not only have a bowling green, but what appears to be an orchard with paths crossing it, a formal flower bed (on the west side), shelter belts of mixed trees, and, on the east side, a cruciform feature which, on zooming in, is marked as a bower.
Detail of the 1852 map, showing the Bower in the asylum grounds, with a cage marked at the centre where the paths cross.
The cage presumably was an aviary. Caged birds were recommended for lunatic asylum patients in the mid-nineteenth century, along with potted plants and pictures, to provide objects of interest and an air of domesticity.
Perth poorhouse (see Perth & Kinross), later Rosslyn House, council offices. From the OS large-scale town plans, 1860. Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland
Perth poorhouse can be seen in splendid isolation, the wrong side of the railway tracks and very much on the outskirts of the city. The map was produced in 1860, the year after the poorhouse was built.
Perth Poorhouse, detail. OS large-scale town plans, 1860. Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland
The National Library of Scotland site allows you to zoom right in. The plan of the poorhouse above shows the room uses, positions of doors, windows and stairs. It shows the divisions within the poorhouse – women on one side and men on the other – and the separation of the aged and children from the able-bodied adults. You can also see that the managers had grander rooms, placed either side of the main entrance, which had bay windows (the Board Room and the Governor’s Office).
Finally, a note for anyone not of a Scottish persuasion. The NLS has maps of Northern Ireland, Wales, and, dare I say it, even England.
![V0013739 The Hospital of Bethlem [Bedlam], St. George's Fields, Lambe Credit: Wellcome Library, London. Wellcome Images images@wellcome.ac.uk http://wellcomeimages.org The Hospital of Bethlem [Bedlam], St. George's Fields, Lambeth: the men's ward of the infirmary. Wood engraving by F. Vizetelly, 1860. 1860 By: Frederick VizetellyPublished: - Copyrighted work available under Creative Commons Attribution only licence CC BY 4.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/](https://i0.wp.com/historic-hospitals.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/c196ec89ee4c1baf87d1922e2be3.jpg?resize=505%2C403&ssl=1)
![V0013741 The Hospital of Bethlem [Bedlam], St. George's Fields, Lambe Credit: Wellcome Library, London. Wellcome Images images@wellcome.ac.uk http://wellcomeimages.org The Hospital of Bethlem [Bedlam], St. George's Fields, Lambeth: the female workroom. Wood engraving probably by F. Vizetelly after F. Palmer, 1860. 1860 By: F. Palmerafter: Frederick VizetellyPublished: - Copyrighted work available under Creative Commons Attribution only licence CC BY 4.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/](https://i0.wp.com/historic-hospitals.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/2f91e1530f7734d87ded0a63d998.jpg?resize=523%2C373&ssl=1)
